Random Thoughts on a Monday Morning

Over the weekend I read somewhere (The Economist, I think) that Bob Barr displayed a hint of a libertarian streak, long ago. Prior to 9/11 he sponsored a bill to prohibit the government from designating foreign organizations as terrorist groups and denying them entry visas. Way to go Bob!

An interesting thing about Bob’s candidacy is that he may put the state of Georgia in play for Obama, drawing votes from McCain due to his name recognition in the state, and his appeal to social conservatives (despite his now being a phoney-baloney libertarian). Therefore, I have a strategy. Starting in September some time I will flood the Atlanta paper, and other papers in the state, with letters to the editor. They’ll be full of outrage that any libertarian could think of voting for such a staunch social conservative. I’ll point out his conservative positions and his anti-immigrant positions, and how much more socially conservative he really is than John McCain. Somehow I’ll work in McCain’s leniency on immigration, and the fact that Barr still runs a GOP PAC. The target of course will be the not-so-bright right-wingnuts who are tempted to abandon McCain anyway.

Eh, I have to do something to keep myself amused.

Filled up the Jeep this morning at a record price: $3.969 at the station on North Avenue across from the Varsity. Sixty two dollars and change, which was not a personal record (which still stands at $64.32) because it only took 15.7 gallons.

The search for new wheels continues, with increasing emphasis on fuel economy.

Bob Barr Wins

Bob Barr won the Libertarian nomination, as expected. Hilarious. Coming in second was a woman named Mary Ruwart, whose chief claim to claim is her support for legalizing child pornography.

“Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.”

– Mary Ruwart, runner-up for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.

Normally I’d try to make some clever, trenchant observation, but some things speak for themselves.

Bob Barr

There was an article in the Atlanta paper over the weekend about a PAC operated by Bob Barr, currently running for the Libertarian Party nomination for President.  It turns out that the percentage of donations to his PAC that have actually gone to GOP political candidates (the stated purpose of the PAC in fundraising letters) is 3%.  The rest goes to “administrative expenses” (read: Bob Barr) and more fundraising.  This isn’t too surprising.

Bob Barr is Rudy Giuliani minus the name recognition, the charisma and any residual sense of human decency. 

Like Giuliani, Barr started out as a publicity-chasing federal prosecutor.  During the 80’s it was said (ok, mostly by me) that the most dangerous place in Atlanta was between Bob Barr and a TV camera.  He later ran for Congress, where he became known as the surliest of the right-wing lunatics brought in during the 1994 GOP takeover.  He was virulently anti-gay and anti-abortion. He was a true-believer in the War on Drugs, fighting to ban medical marijuana at the federal level.  He proposed that the Wiccan religion be banned in the military.  He was probably best known as a prosecutor in Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, and in fact loudly advocated Clinton’s impeachment before the Lewinsky affair.

Well it turns out that Barr had a few problems of his own.  For example, on the whole abortion thing — his wife had one that he paid for.    He was on his third wife, having cheated on at least one of them, and having failed to provide child support for two of them.  Photos surfaced of him licking whipped cream off a stripper’s breasts.  And there was an incident when he accidentally discharged a pistol he was handling at a fundraising event.  He claimed it must have had a hair trigger.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

The most amazing thing this gigantic hypocrite did, however, was to sue Larry Flynt (whose investigators had turned up proof of the affairs and the abortion) for $30 million for infliction of emotional suffering, while simultaneously supporting a tort reform bill to limit emotional suffering awards to $250,000. The suit was thrown out on the entirely reasonable basis that the accusations were true.

In 2002 the Democrats who still controlled the Georgia Legislature redestricted him out of Congress.  He was forced to run against another incumbent Republican, John Linder.  The good people of the north Atlanta suburbs sensibly chose the Republican who did not actually ooze slime before their eyes.

Now Bob has apparently concluded that his career in the GOP is over, and he has become a libertarian.  A guy who built his career putting people away for victimless crimes, making it the federal government’s business who you marry, inserting the government into reproductive decisions and trying to tell men and women serving their country what religion they can observe*, has suddenly seen the light of personal freedom.  It’s not often a 60-year-old man repudiates his entire life’s work, but slime is nothing if not flexible.

And yet the Libertarian party may actually nominate him.  I sympathize with a lot of libertarian (small “l”) views, but the Libertarian Party in practice seems to be made up mainly of tax dodgers, gun nuts and assorted tinfoil hat types.  Can even that pack of losers be stupid enough to fall for this guy?  Stay tuned.  I think their convention is in a few days.

*Barr, though of prime age to have served in Vietnam, evidently used educational deferments to avoid service.  But you probably could have guessed that, as personal cowardice is de rigueur among right-wingnuts.